After That Night

A: Yes, and there’s been a bit of a backlash from women, saying women shouldn’t write about these things. I don’t think anybody should tell you what to write about or not write about: that’s censorship in its own form. If that’s not the type of book you want to read, there are many other great novelists whose stories you can enjoy.

But, for me, it feels very personal because when I was growing up, my grandmother was being violently abused by my grandfather. We never talked about it. She would have a black eye or a split lip or a broken bone. I remember, as a kid, sitting at the supper table, and my uncles would tease her about being clumsy. I had a lightbulb moment with my sister. I said, ‘I don’t think she’s clumsy. I think it’s our grandfather.’ My sister said, ‘We don’t talk about that.’ So we didn’t. I didn’t. As I got older and became a woman in the world, experiencing various aggressions and harassment, it occurred to me that our silence only protected him.

I want to write about it. In the United States alone it has happened to almost a quarter of a million women every single year—and that’s over the age of eighteen and who reported it. The women who didn’t report it and the vast number of child sexual abuse victims aren’t in that statistic. When you don’t talk about it, it doesn’t stop. It gives perpetrators and other people the ability to say, ‘It’s not that bad’ or ‘She changed her mind’ or ‘What was she doing?’

We put things on sexual assault that we don’t put on other crimes. If your house was burgled, I would not say to you, ‘Why did you have nice things in your house?’ or ‘Why didn’t you have a better lock on your door?’ I would say, ‘I’m so sorry.’ Or if someone is murdered, the police don’t say to the family, ‘A murder investigation is really hard, maybe you don’t want to do this.’ We put all these expectations on women who are victims of these crimes. Even police officers. There has been a rash of women who have reported rape and been arrested by the cops for filing false police reports. In many instances, it’s come to light these women were raped, but these cops just approached it as ‘All women are liars.’

That’s why I think it’s important to talk about it. And not just talk about the crime, but what it does to everyone in the circle. Specifically with this book, After That Night, you see how it completely changed the course of Sara’s life. That’s what it does. It creates so many ripples throughout her community. Everybody she comes in contact with has experienced a form of trauma on some level because of this one violent act. That, I think, is the point of crime fiction. Good crime fiction talks about how violence affects society, how it changes people, what it can do to them. That’s why it’s important. I don’t think it’s a mission per se; I’m just speaking for people who don’t normally have a voice.

Crime Fiction and Social Justice recommended by Karin Slaughter